Contemporary knowledge workers increasingly carry out their duties collaboratively, using shared electronic information. Examples of sources or “collaboration channels” in which information is originated and exchanged include electronic mail, electronic diaries or “calendars”, and live “chat” sessions. In electronic mail (hereafter simply “mail”), a user composes a mail message and forwards it to one or more recipients for their perusal at a later time. In live chat, two or more participants compose short text messages and exchange them in real time, resulting in a session transcript. An electronic calendar allows a user to set up a meeting with certain details about time, place, and content, and send entries including the meeting details to other users. The calendar entry typically appears as a block of time in a graphical representation of the recipient's daily schedule. All information generated by such collaboration channels may be saved for later search and retrieval by one or more users.
A typical workflow often involves multiple collaboration channels. For example, one worker sends a mail message to another suggesting a meeting be arranged and giving some details of the topic. The recipient then arranges the meeting and sends a calendar entry to the first worker. After the meeting, the participants conduct a chat session continuing the meeting discussion. The workflow now includes heterogeneous information fragments originating from three collaboration channels.
It is therefore desirable to be able to integrate or link together the heterogeneous fragments of information from different channels so as to be able to review the entire workflow. In conventional system, as described in the example above, the recipient would be able to link the original mail with the calendar entry, and the calendar entry with the subsequent chat session transcript. However, the typical knowledge worker, particularly one in a more senior position of responsibility, participates in multiple such workflows concurrently, each involving the generation and circulation of information fragments in multiple collaboration channels. Linking heterogeneous collaborative information fragments to a common workflow rapidly becomes a tiresome and laborious, and possibly error-prone, task. Unless the worker is an unusually well organized individual, there is a high risk that a fragment of collaborative information will go astray, either remaining unlinked or being linked to the wrong workflow.